Infrared detectors are used in a wide variety of applications including, for example, remote sensing, infrared astronomy, and various military applications. Infrared detectors are generally sensitive to thermal noise, and are therefore often cooled to cryogenic operating temperatures, for example, approximately 77 Kelvin (K). Recently, there has been a significant interest in higher operating temperature (HOT) infrared detectors, particularly HOT infrared focal plane arrays (FPAs), to remove or reduce the need for expensive cooling systems. Current approaches to realizing HOT detectors have focused on either the material design to address fundamental mechanisms such as Auger recombination, or reducing the volume of the detector to reduce sensitivity to thermal noise. However, by focusing on only one aspect of the problem at a time (either recombination or volume reduction), current approaches limit their utility, and even when ideally implemented, these solutions do not necessarily achieve a high enough operating temperature to provide significant benefit.